


Like real people do

by Anonymous



Category: Ragnatela
Genre: Brothels, Character Death, Character Study, F/F, F/M, Italian Mafia, Law School, M/M, Multi, Original Character(s), Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Prostitution, Rape/Non-con Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:02:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27191461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Patience starts the suicide note before she's even left Garland City proper.
Relationships: Leonardo Borghese /Patience Winslow /Salvatore Mallozzi
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	Like real people do

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Quieta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quieta/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Ragnatela](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7942924) by [Quieta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quieta/pseuds/Quieta). 



> Just an AU sequel of Quieta's absolutely haunting, and breathtaking story Ragnatela. It was dark, it was amazing, and I'm not quite ready to let Patience rest in peace it seems. This is really just a cracky Don! Patience AU that somehow gained a plot. I really just want a fucks with Leonardo's life even more than she already did, and has kids who love their mom AU ok. No lie. This is just an excuse to write that.

Patience starts the suicide note before she's even left Garland City proper.

Its a scrunched up, messy scramble of a thing-more etched then written onto the back of the diner receipt she'd repurposed for this use.

Its surprisingly simple really, all things considered. Oddly poetic, in a way that Patience herself had never been in the time before. 

_I was Patience Rebbeca Winslow. Now I am no more_.

She'd contemplated dropping it in Agamemnons' pocket as he'd let her hug him, contemplated leaving this last trace of Patience Winslow behind to be washed, and folded and mashed into a paste in the pocket of the last person who would even show any semblance of care for her. But she'd hesitated, torn between the indecision of her end remaining a mystery or of sacrificing one last piece of herself to this goddamed city, and then Agememnon had shifted with unease and she'd let go.

In the end she'd let go of Agamemnon, crunched the piece of paper as far down into the creases of her own hand as she could and simply commented, "They're all gone. Everyone who ever loved me. Everyone who I've ever loved." 

She doesn't expect him to say anything in response to that. Doesn't even know herself why she'd voiced those thoughts allowed. But then she thinks of the letter in her hand. Of the last traces of her name scrawled in shaking letters along the back of an order for one glass of orange juice and a grapefruit, and _realises_. 

He wouldn't understand. If she left the letter with him all she would forever remain as would be that poor Patience Winslow, the girl Agamemnon hadn't thought too much about, the blip on his record, who he may think of fondly sometime in the future.

_I should have known_ , he might say one day, sharing a whiskey with a grandson or daughter determined to follow his path, _as soon as she'd hugged me I should have known._ That poor woman. Her only crime had been to fall in love with the wrong people - and it wouldn't matter Patience knew, if she argued till she was black and blue that she'd never loved them. In the end, years in the future, this is how it would be remembered. Of how people used and discarded her, and then, when she hadn't know what else to do with herself, had simply decided to do herself in instead. 

As was the case with every and all Chapman woman, there was a certain amount of pride cemented deep in the rods of Patience spine. The type of pride that refused to bend beneath the thoughts of others. Their southern pride her Grandmother had called it. Their fucking stubbornness, her grandfather had complained. Their own destruction, her aunt had whispered. 

When - and it was undoubtedly when Patience felt- she eventually killed herself, it would be because others knew she wanted to. It would be because it was her choice. Not a reaction, a gut instinct to escape her demons and the men that were one in the same. It would be because one day, in the future, maybe drunk out of her mind or with tropes of grandkids around her, it would be because she'd wake up one day and say _fuck it, no more_. She'd go out her own way. With no pity, no sympathy, or the words of others being the rock that would weigh her down as she'd sink into her eternal rest.

Patience _fucking_ Chapman was not a matyr meant to die on the pyre for others regrets. 

So she packs up her car, pulls her anger and numbness around her like a blanket for strength, and pushes her car out onto the dark, dirty road ahead, and after that, onto gray, granite soaked highway that stretches out before her like infinity.

She rolls the window down an hour out of Garland, fishes the crumpled receipt from her pocket and holds it out over the open expanse of the road before her. And she waits. 

For divine intervention, or the sense of right that now, _now_ is the moment to forever let go of Patience Winslow. 

But it never comes. 

She stares at her hand as it hangs out the window, at the edges of the note thrumming beneath the onslaught of the wind and decides _no._ No, this isn't right either. 

She tucks the note into the dashboard after that, blindly leaning across the empty seat besides her to tuck it away even as her foot pushs the speedometer closer to 100. Her car shakes, tyres spin her into the other lane, and the dashboard closes with a satisfying clunk. She pops her head back up, swears viciously at the truck barrelling towards her, and spins the wheel and herself back into the correct lane of the ever expanding highway.

Eventually this too would end, and the woman who had been Patience Winslow would end with it, but for just a moment she was still herself, and for the first time in forever, no matter how hollow it may have felt, she was free. 


End file.
